For whatever reason, low-rep strength is climbing again. I attended (but did not compete, just watched) a powerlifting meet today and hit a couple PRs in the warmup area. Was very glad to see those again. Mood is improving, almost like my mind is getting used to the 19-nor.
Bad:
Upper body hypertrophy has slowed and body weight actually decreased to 209 I attribute this to focusing less on legs and more on upper body this cycle. As 2/3 of your bodyās muscle is in your legs and back, Iām not surprised to see a 2 pound drop as they are detrained just a tad a bit.
Overall, still happy with the cycle. All measurements are the same this week, except weight (-2lbs). Pics below. I took my usual progress pic but added my best typical bodybuilder pose (ha ha) sucking it in and flexing.
yea, 200%ā¦
there was a time i didnt train legs at all - mine ar genetic big, i dont need to train them and they remain same sizeā¦
i was on a cut, and decided to do stationary bike for a changeā¦ really pumped my legs doing that and the next morning i was like 5lbs heavierā¦
I noticed that every time i did something more for my legs my weight shoot up a few kgs and stayed that way for 2-3 days at least.
My GF trains legs once a week and she also is always a bit heavier the next morning after a heavy leg day.
Thanks man. Glad others experience this, too. Totally agree with the pump/swelling/inflammation causing fluctuations.
I never sweat the scale too much, but I do track it, just as one of many data points.
I care: #1 are my compound lifts going up #2 for this cycle, is overall upper body mass increasing (only as a means to and end for #1 above)
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ā¦ #657 what the scale reads
10/9/21: week 6 update. Literally no changes whatsoever. All measurements the same, all lifts the same. Completely stalled.
Trying to decide right now whether to
A) increase training volume and daily calories or B) stop the cycle and go into a cut on 300mgs Test only. Iām āleaningā toward cutting, since the last time I ran the doses Iām running now, I went up to 5,000 cals/day and stilled stalled.
Life circumstances just arenāt optimal right now for doing 2-a-days and slamming 6,000+ calories/day.
IDK, 6 weeks isnāt very long. At least in my experience, guys who already have muscle take a while to grow. You do you, but I donāt really see weekly changes other than bloat. I will say this go around Iāve seen some progress, but I attribute that mostly to having lost strength due to a nerve injury and the addition of tbol.
If your weight is the same also, you are not eating enough tho. I always use getting fat as an indication that im growing. So the problem would be real if you gain weight, get fat but dont get any stronger. If you dont even get fat, you are most likely just maintaining.
Iām not gaining weight or fat. So, youāre absolutely right. Iām just maintaining.
Strength gains are almost non-existent - a PR every now and then when Iām amped up on caffeine and full of carbs.
I know I should man up, dig deep, train harder and eat more, but life circumstances just arenāt there for it right now.
I was hoping I could put in an 8/10 effort this cycle and let the drugs do the rest, but itās just not panning out that way this time. Iām not a newbie anymore, as mben pointed out. So nothing short of a 10/10 effort is going to produce results.
I personally donāt see this as a linear progression. Some guys think that they should just get progressively stronger but thereās so much to strength gains like rest, diet, sleep, mood, injuries, stress, etc. If you could graph it, it would be more like peaks and valleys rather than a straight increasing line.
Plus as you get older, its just plain harder to get stronger.
I will say that for me personally, I probably overtrained most of my lifting life until the last few years. Now I only train 3 days a week and my muscles respond great. I also keep rest between sets very short which keeps my heart rate and my muscles pumped.
Yes but if he is not gaining weight, he is not gaining muscle and there cant be new strenght gains with no muscle gains, unless the person is undertrained until this moment. After your noob gains, strenght potential is exactly proportional to muscle size and/or specific drugs that increase neuromuscular efficiency. So the only way to gain strenght besides tren and a-bombs, is to increase muscle size.
This is true, but it is also the same thing im saying. You need NEW muscle to lift more weight, BUTā¦ interesting that i have noticed that my weight and size gains are also just like you mentioned - peaks and valleys.
I dont gain in a straight line. I get these weird jumps once in a while. Im stuck at one weight for a week or two, or three and even a month and then i just wake up 2lbs heavier and the weight stays there for the next period of time until next jump.
There several examples where the heavily muscled person is not as strong as someone else. My first thought goes to strongman competitors. They clearly donāt look like Dorian Yates or Ronnie Coleman but are clearly very, very strong (except for Marius Pudzianowski, that guy could have stepped on stage and done well).
You are confusing cosmetic muscle genetics and bodyfat, and also - forgetting to look at the height.
Pro bodybuilders are midgets with low bodyfat and godlike genetics that make them LOOK big.
Strongmen ALWAYS have much more muscle and size than ANY bodybuilder. They are not that lean, and most dont have the āprettyā genetics. Then again, bodybuilders dont have the genetics for tendons and joints to lift stuff that strongmen do.
But if we speak muscle and size, no its a common misconception that strongmen are not as big as bodybuilders. Strongmen are twice the size of bodybuilders and unless its a genetic mutation that occurs in rare occasions, āstrenght is proportional to a crossection of the area of the muscleā - that is the actual scientific fact and term used for this.
Genetic outliers aside, generally speaking, even veteran lifters can get stronger at a given weight/size for a good while before they have maxed out their strength potential at that size and then have to increase size to gain strength.
Powerlifters are the best example of this. The older guys in my PL gym have competed in the same weight class for years and continue to set new state records each meet. But even those guys will eventually reach a point where they have to get bigger to get stronger.
And thatās where I feel Iām at right now. I think Iāve gotten all the mileage I can get out of 205-210. Sure, There are plenty of 200-pound dudes out there stronger than me, but I feel like I have milked all the strength that I am going to get out of this BW.
Which only leaves me with two options for progression:
lean out and build back up to a harder 205-210
eat and train with a pure hypertrophy focus
To @hankthetank89 ās point, both would result in strength gains caused by increase CSA.
yes, but thats why i said that strenght is proportionate, not equal to sizeā¦ guys with powerlifting genetics get more out of the muscle.
just like bodybuilders get more out of the dose of any drugā¦
thats why people like me and you need twice the dose to get half the muscle, and we get much less strenght out of every pound of muscle, lol
The guy with the best strength genetics I know is now pretty much at a point that to get stronger he needs to get more muscle. Now what he can move with the amount of muscle he has is unbelievable (has deadlifted 800 at like 210 lbs and he is like 6ā0"). He can do more with less muscle than most, but at a certain point, he needs to put muscle on to get stronger.
He can take A bombs for 2 weeks, and get some strength out of that, but that goes when he gets off of them.
For me at least, Iāll get above 210 here on my blast, but long term, my weight will probably not be much above that. I donāt want all that comes with being much bigger. I think if long term I can get to a lean 205-210, that Iāll be strong enough (if there is such a thing).
This is kind of an aside, but one thing that has always interested me is the point of muscle insertion on the bone. This is obviously something you cannot ever change, but does highly dictate your natural strength levels.
There are also CNS adaptations that can be made that increase strength. I donāt know the exact mechanism through which this works, but I would guess it has something to do with either recruiting more muscle fibers, or allowing the existing fibers to contract harder. This seems to come from powerlifting style workouts, where heavy singles/doubles/triples occur frequently.
Another way to gain strength without gaining weight would be to optimize body composition, which is the process I am going through right now, and it sounds like this is your current approach as well, @Professor_Hulk
Yeah the goal of this cycle was specificallly upper body hypertrophy. But only as a means to an end to bring my flat bench up. I want to compete in a PL meet, next spring, in the 90kg weight class. My squat and deadlift are within 30-50 pounds of the state record for my age, but my bench sucks, at 315. Iām way short there. Current state record is 367.
So I was saying last update I gave: I can either double down on training volume and caloric intake to try to revive gains this cycle, or just chalk it up as a failed experiment, start a cut, and try to grow into the meet in the new year.
As you said, I think the latter is where Iām at.
I know for certain that I do not want to blow my weight class and compete in the 100kg class. I always feel miserable above 210-215, no matter what training program or what drugs Iām on.
so true for me. Iām so tired of watching dudes double their muscle mass on only a couple cycles of under a gram of gear.